Finkelstein. Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud

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VOLUME 9,ARTICLE 24

ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN,PERSIAN PERIODJERUSALEM ANDYEHUD:AREJOINDER
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2 JOURNAL OF HEBREWSCRIPTURES

PERSIANPERIODJERUSALEMANDYEHUD:AREJOINDER

ISRAELFINKELSTEINTELAVIVUNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION

I have recently published articles on Jerusalem and Nehemiahs

wall (Finkelstein 2008a), and about the light that archaeology shedson the List of Returnees in Ezra and Nehemiah (idem 2008b). Mymain conclusions in these two articles are:

1. Persian period Jerusalem was a small settlement that cov-ered an area of ca. 22.5 hectares, with a population of nomore than a few hundred people.

2. Over a century of archaeological investigation in Jerusa-lem has failed to reveal any trace of a city-wall that can bedated to the Persian period and identified as the wall ofNehemiah.

3. The description of the construction of the wall in Nehe-miah 3 may represent the reality of the erection of theFirst Wall in the Hasmonean period.

4. The archaeology of the places mentioned in the List ofReturnees in Ezra (2:167) and Nehemiah (7:668) seemsto show that this text, too, probably represents a LateHellenistic (2nd centuryBCE) rather than a Persian-periodreality.

A few recent publications have taken issue with these observa-tions (Zevit 2009; E. Mazar 2009; Barkay 2008; Lipschits 2009).

This article is meant to address the main arguments advanced inthese publications. My major interest is not the dispute itself, butrather the methodological questions that stand behind the debate,namely issues related to the methods of field archaeology and theinterface between archaeology and the biblical texts.

LITERAL,UNCRITICAL READING OF THE BIBLICALTEXT

Zevit (2009) has contested my treatment of the archaeology(mainly surveys) of sites mentioned in the List of Returnees anddefended the dating of the list to the Persian period. The under-pinnings of this debate are methodological and involve two con-


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PERSIAN PERIODJERUSALEM ANDYEHUD: A REJOINDER 3

trasting attitudes to the reconstruction of the history of AncientIsrael. Zevitin the footsteps of the Albright Schoolrepeats thebiblical testimony in modern language; adapts archaeology when itis useful and rejects it when it stands in his way; and fiercely fights-

off any attempt to challenge the historicity of the descriptions inthe text. I tend to give archaeology a central, independent role andtreat the text as a stratified literary work whose layers are embedded

with the ideological goals of their authors and the realities of theirtime.

Zevits summary of the history of Jerusalem in the Persian pe-riod best demonstrates his approach:

Some early returnees rebuilt an altar and reinstituted sacrificesto ward off misfortune. Over a year later they got around to

setting the foundation for a new temple. Only some years later,during the reign of Darius I, was the temple completed.... Jeru-salem, however, remained unsettled with her ruined houses

and breached walls. It was only during the reign of ArtaxerxesI ... that Cyrus original project was completed. Nehemiah, anofficial in the royal court, turned Jerusalem into a religious and

political centre in Yehud ... by completing a slapdash wall withsome descendents from the first returnee settlers among thelabourers... (Zevit 2009: 134).

It is my contention that the reconstruction of the history of Ancient Israel should be based on three pillars: archaeology, thebiblical text and ancient Near Eastern records. The latter do notexist for the Persian period (except for a single reference in Ele-phantine), hence Zevits description should be read as no morethan an English translation of the ancient text.

Moreover, from an archaeological perspective, Zevits posi-tion ends up challenging the archaeological finds. In fact, as thefollowing observations demonstrate, his article is lacking in know-ledge and understanding of archaeological method and techniques:

1. Zevit argues against the reliability of archaeological sur-veys: Surveys are simply surveys. The accidental origin of what surveyors pick up somewhat randomly cannot beused to determine the actual nature of a site... (Zevit2009: 131).1 In a properly conducted survey finds are notpicked up randomly and the results are not arbitrary.

This has been demonstrated by the best and brightest of American archaeology (none belonging to the biblicalarchaeology branch of the profession), who in fact estab-

lished the basics of the art of modern archaeological sur-veys, namely Braidwood (1937) in the plain of Antioch,

1 Incidentally, in the same breath Zevit (2009: 128) uses the very samesurveys to support his reading of Haggai and Zechariah regarding popula-tion decline in Yehud in the 6th centuryBCE.


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Willey (1953) in South America, Adams (e.g., 1981) inMesopotamia, and others. Survey work, though not devo-id of errors, is a highly sophisticated domain of archaeo-logy (see, e.g., Banning 2002; Collins and Leigh Moly-

neaux 2003), and is especially valuable when a large num-ber of sites are examined (and some of them excavated)exactly the case under discussion here.2

2. Theoretically an historical presence [in the Persian pe-riodI.F.] could be invisible to archaeology (Zevit 2009:125). This is a surprising statement. Walls, floors, sherds,stone vessels, metal implements and other finds do notevaporate. Even faint human activity leaves traces, whichcan be detected in excavations. Surveys, too, if properlyexecuted, provide a good picture of the settlement historyof a site. This is especially true in the highlands, where set-tlements are usually located on ridges and hills and thus

sherds are eroded to the slopes, where they can easily becollected in large numbers.

3. Though, to use Zevits words again, surveys are simplysurveys, that is, in certain casesmainly when the num-ber of sherds collected is small, they may supply less thana full picture on the settlement history of a given site, thisis certainly not true in the case of sites which producehundreds of sherds: 242 sherds were collected at Anata,440 at Deir el-Azar (the location of Kirjath Jearim), 243at Khirbet el-Kafira (the mound of biblical Chephirah),359 at er-Ram (Ramah), 284 at Jaba (Geba) and 643 atMukhmas (Michmash) (for details see Feldstein et al.1993; Dinur and Feig 1993). In these cases the results are

decisive, even when the evidence is negative; certainly,they cannot be ignored.3

4. What Zevit says about the two partially overlapping Per-sian periods (i.e., the historical and the archaeological;see Zevit 2009: 132) is trivial. Similar phenomena havebeen studied long ago regarding other transition periods,e.g., from the Roman to Byzantine and from the Byzan-tine to Early Islamic periods. Similarly, what Zevit states

2 Six of the 17 sites of the List of Returnees treated by me were tho-roughly excavated.

3 When dealing with the location of biblical Anathoth, for example,can one ignore the 242 sherds from the village of Anata only because of

what an early scholar claimed in 1936 (Zevit 2009: 134), when archaeologywas in its infancy? Incidentally, in this case, too, Zevit practices a doublestandard, on the one hand arguing that surveys cannot supply an accuratepicture of the settlement history of a site; on the other hand criticizing mycautious description of the results in terms of intensive or weak activity(idem: 131).


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about the transition of pottery traditions between the lateIron II and the 6th centuryBCE (idem: 125) is known toevery first-year archaeology student and taken into con-sideration in every serious research of the period. In any

event, the 5th-4th centuries BCE pottery repertoire is well-known and easy to identify (e.g., Stern 1982; Lipschits2005: 193203). This repertoire is missing from five ofthe 17 sites that appear in the List of Returnees and thatare discussed in my article, including the well-excavatedGibeon and Bethel.

Surprisingly, despite his reservations, Zevit seems to acceptthe fact that five of the sites mentioned in the List of Returnees

were not inhabited in the Persian period. His logic of solving theproblem is as follows: The returnees settled in all places mentionedin the list in the late 6th centuryBCE, but a few decades later (and Ishould add during a peaceful, empire-dominated period), they

abandoned five of them, including the two highly important sites ofGibeon and Bethel. This acrobatic proposal is aimed only at savinga simplistic reading of the text; it does not seem to me to be a via-ble historical option.

Zevits discussion of geographical history shows how muchhypothetical is his approach when it is compared to the solid, con-servative method of archaeological survey. A good illustration is hislogic regarding the location of Senaah (Neh 3: 35), which accordingto him is possiblya place rather than a family nameitalics mine.His argument is as follow: (a) Senaah may beequated with Hasse-nuah of Neh 11:9 and 1 Chr 9:7, (b) the latter may be associatedwith Madalsenna of Eusebius, (c) which wasprobablylocated northof Jericho; (d) this place canpossiblybe equated with Toponym 88

of the Sheshonq I Karnak list (incidentally, this toponym is listedwith the Negeb group of sites!), and (e) this in turn, maytell us thatthe location of (f) anotherpossibleplace (if not a clan) Elam wasnorth of Senaah near Wadi Farah.... I counted seven conditions inthis single identification. Zevit adds that perhaps each territory,Senaah and the other Elam, contained some small permanent vil-lages, a scatter of seasonal hamlets, and many range-tied, migratorytent communities... (2009: 129). Yet, there are no settlements,hamlets and migratory community in the region mentioned byZevit; the archaeology of the Jordan Valley north of Jericho (see,e.g., Bar Adon 1972) does not have them. Here, too, highly hypo-thetical interpretation holds the upper hand, while the archaeologi-cal facts are ignored.

The identification of Gibbar and Magbish, supposedly namedfor Persian personalities (supporters of Darius I) with Gibeon andMizpah (Zevit 2009: 129130) is even more far-fetched. We do notknow if these are indeed place names. Moreover, there is no testi-mony for calling places after Persian personalities. In addition,there is no indication for a change in the names of Gibeon andMizpah. In short, in these cases the important field of geographical


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history becomes a playground for unsupported proposals that ig-nore archaeological evidence for the sake of consistency with abiblical reading.

In sum, Zevits article provides an excellent case-study of the

flaws of the Albrightian approach to biblical history and as such itdoes not provide any solid base for reconstructing the history ofancient Israel in the Persian period.

NEHEMIAHSWALL INJERUSALEM:BUILT ON

QUICKSAND

Eilat Mazar (2009a; 2009b) recently announced the discovery of afragment of the wall built by Nehemiah in the City of David. Sherefers to the northern tower in Area G (and a section of a wallconnected to it on the south), which were first excavated by Maca-lister and Duncan (1926). The tower has commonly been inter-preted as part of the First Wall built in the late Hellenistic (Hasmo-

nean) period (e.g., Kenyon 1974: 191195; Shiloh 1984: 2930;Wightman 1993).

Mazar bases her dating of the fortification on finds retrievedunderthe tower: two dog burials (with no pottery) were found di-rectly below the lower course of the tower. A 1.5 meter thick layeruncovered under these burials produced sherds dated to the endof the 6th and the first half of the 5th centuries BCE.4 Further downMazar uncovered a three meter thick layer with a large quantity ofpottery dating to the late 6th and beginning of the 5th centuryBCE(E. Mazar 2009a: 7476; 2009b). According to Mazars logic, thesefinds date the tower to the middle of the Persian period whichallows her to identify it as part of Nehemiahs wall.

Needless to say, these layers provide no more than a terminus

post quemfor the construction of the towerlater than the 6th/early5th centuryBCE. The absence of Persian period material here (un-less the dog burials belong to this period) means nothing; the wall

was constructed on the edge of the ridge, at the top of the steepslope, and it is only logical to assume that it was laid after prepara-tory work, which could have included a leveling operation. Themost logical date for the towers and the wall is the late Hellenistic(Hasmonean) period. This wall is known from many locations inboth the southeastern and southwestern hills (e.g., Wightman 1993;Geva 2003: 529534).

Similar to Zevits, Mazars attitude to the biblical testimonyis highly literal and uncritical: Decades after the Babylonian de-struction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, the city appears to have re-mained desolate and in ruins. A change occurred with the surrenderof the Babylonians to the Persians and the decree of Cyrus, king of

4 Similar material was found laid against the northern tower by Ke-nyon (1974: 183) and possibly under the tower by Macalister and Duncan(1926: 51).


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Persia, in 538 BCE, which allowed exiled Jews to return to Jerusa-lem and rebuild their temple .... In 445 BCE, Nehemiah was ap-pointed governor and given the authority from the Persian king torebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiahs descriptions reflect the

actual appearance of the ruined, and, later, the restored walls of thecity (E. Mazar 2009a: 72; for Mazars similar literal reading ofother biblical material on Jerusalem see Finkelstein et al. 2007).

HOW FULL CAN AN EMPTYGLASS BE?

Barkay has recently addressed the question of Persian period Jeru-salem (2008). Indirectly, Barkay agrees with me about the positiveevidence, which testifies to a 22.5 hectare settlement (2.8 hectaresaccording to Lipschits 2009; see below). But based on his rejec-tion of the negative evidence, Barkay adds almost 10 hectares andargues that in the Persian period Jerusalem covered an area of 12hectares. In this, he positions himself as the ultra-maximalist of our

generation. One can understand how a text scholar reaches a max-imalist estimate based solely on the biblical testimony (e.g., Wein-berg 1992: 43). But how does an archaeologist arrive at such anestimate?5

Barkay rightly acknowledges that no Persian period structureor floor has ever been found in Jerusalem (2008: 50), but he saysthat this is also the situation in the Late Bronze, Iron IIA, Babylo-nian and Early Hellenistic periods. He seems to see this as evidencefor the possibility that even periods of prosperous settlements canleave no remains, because the core of the urban area, which wasthe nucleus of the settlement in these periods, was entirely de-

voured (sic!) by the intensive settlement of later periods... (hereand below my translation I.F.). I have already challenged the

notion that walls, vessels and other finds can disappear and in anyevent, I would interpret the situation described by Barkay in theopposite way: in these periods (apart from the finds from the IronIIA which do indicate a growing settlementFinkelstein 2001) thesettlement was indeed poor and limited in size and population.

Barkay claims that the Persian period pottery is difficult to dis-tinguish from the pottery of the Iron II and Hellenistic periods(idem: 49). This may be true for a limited number of pottery forms,especially when found in a small quantity in a survey. It is certainlynot the case in a large-scale survey and in an excavation. Persian

5 The large number of Yehud seal impressions mentioned by Barkay isacknowledged by all scholars and cannot be an argument in the discussionof the size of the settlement. Barkay accepts Eilat Mazars identification ofthe northern tower on the eastern slope of the City of David with the wallof Nehemiah: Recent excavations by Eilat Mazar proved that that Maca-lister and Duncans northern tower should be dated to the Persian period(Barkay 2008: 52). As seen above, this statement gives new meaning to theterm prove in archaeology.


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period storage jars, mortaria, cooking pots, juglets and importedvessels are easy to identify and distinguish from their counterpartsin the late Iron II and Hellenistic periods.

Barkay argues that the entire southern part of the Persian pe-

riod settlement on the ridge of the City of David was eradicated bythe Hasmoneans in the late Hellenistic period, in connection withthe construction of the Akra fortress (2008: 48). This is a hypothesisbased on an assumption(the location of the fort here), which is notsupported by a single find. It also contradicts all other suggestionsfor the location of the Akra, which are supported by at least someevidencearchaeological and/or textual (summary in Tal, inpress).

Barkays reference to the few finds retrieved in the sifting ofearth taken by the waqffrom the Temple Mount (2008: 49) is mis-leading. He acknowledges that very few Persian period finds wereretrieved, but withholds the full picture of strong evidence for IronIIB-C and late Hellenistic activity there (Barkay and Zweig 2006).

The same holds true for the evidence from the vicinity of Jerusa-lem. Barkay mentions the existence of spots with Persian periodremains (2008: 50), but does not provide the reader with the full setof data: The thorough survey of the Jerusalem countryside revealed185 Iron II and 140 Hellenistic find spots, compared to 17 Persianperiod find spots (Kloner 2003: 19*).

Barkay attacks my proposal to see a Hasmonean reality behindNehemiah 3. Though I have suggested this with caution, as a pos-sibility, none ofhisarguments stands scholarly scrutiny:

1. Similar to Zevit and E. Mazar, Barkays point of departureis the acceptance of the geographical material in the bookof Nehemiah as a testimony for the Persian period (2008:

51). This, of course, is a circular argument.2. Barkay rejects the idea that Chapter 3 is a later addition to

the book of Nehemiah (2008: 51). Yet, text scholars havenoted the independent nature of the list in Nehemiah 3 ascompared to the rest of the Nehemiah Memoir (Mo-

winckel 1964: 109116; Williamson 1985: 200; Blenkin-sopp 1988: 231 to name a few) and some understood it asa later addition to the book (e.g., Torrey 1896; 3738;1910: 249; Mowinckel 1964: 109116).

3. Barkay opposes my notion that highlands sites were notfortified in the Persian period and brings the fortificationof Stratum I at Lachish as an example of a Persian periodcity-wall in Judah (sic! 2008: 51). But Lachish is not lo-cated in the highlands and was not included in the territo-ry of Yehud (see, e.g., maps in Stern 1982: 247; Lipschits2005: 183); rather, it was an Achaemenid administrativecenter (Ussishkin 2004: 95; Fantalkin and Tal 2006).

4. The list [in Nehemiah 3 I.F.] is clearly of administrativenature, it is technical and boring, composed of names of


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people and places only. ... Had the list been fictitious andanachronistic, we would have expected that it would dis-close an ideological motivation of sort, and that it wouldbe less dry and more interesting (2008: 52). According to

this logic the description of the list of Judahite towns inJoshua 15 dry, boring, composed of toponyms only andlacking any apparent ideologyshould be dated to thetime of Joshua....

5. If the list dates to the Hasmonean period, one would ex-pect it to disclose Greek names (2008: 52). According tothis logic almost no biblical text was written in the Helle-nistic period.

6. Some of the names of individuals and families which ap-pear in Nehemiah 3 are mentioned in other chapters ofNehemiah and even in Ezra; they do not appear insources of other periods (Barkay 2008: 52), plus, at least

10 toponyms which appear in the list are known from ear-lier sources (idem: 5253). These are not arguments, be-cause the complier of Nehemiah 3 could have takennames of individuals and places from earlier biblical texts.

7.The list of districts of Yehud in Nehemiah 3 well fits thedistribution of the Yehud seal impressions of the Persianperiod and does not fit the extent of Hasmonean rule atthe time when the First Wall was built (idem: 53). Thisstatement is wrong. The overwhelming majority of Per-sian period Yehud impressions (Types 112 in Vander-hooft and Lipschits 2007) are concentrated in Jerusalemand its immediate surroundings, including Ramat Rahel.No such seal impressions were found at Beth-zur andQeilah and only a relatively small number was foundnorth of Jerusalem. The list in Nehemiah 3 seems to fitthe extent of Hasmonean Judea before it started expand-ing to the west and north in ca. 140 BCE (Finkelstein inpress).

8.The list of enemies of JudahTobiah the Ammonite, San-ballat the Horonite and Geshem the Arabian (e.g., Nehe-miah 2: 19, 6:1)fits only the Persian period (2008: 53).

This argument should be seriously considered for the fol-lowing reasons: (a) a Sanballat is mentioned in the Ele-phantine papyri as the Governor of Samaria; and (b)Gashmu the king of Kedar appears in a 5th century Ara-

maic inscription on a silver vessel ostensibly found at Tellel-Maskhuta in the Delta. But the fact that these namesappear in the Nehemiah Memoir means nothing for thedate of Nehemiah 3, considered by most scholar to be anindependent source (see partial list of references above).Moreover, as I will try to show in detail in another place,these names cannot be read in a simplistic way also in re-


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gard to the rest of the Book of Nehemiah. A few observa-tions suffice: (a) the name Sanballat is mentioned in the

Wadi ed-Daliyeh papyri and by Josephus Ant 11; both(and probably also Sanballat of the Elephantine papyri)

are later than the conventional date given to Nehemiah;(b) the Tobiads appear in extra-biblical texts in the 3rdand 2nd centuries bce and being a symbol of Hellenisticculture, in Hasmonean times there was good reason toportray them negatively; (c) Geshem is a common Arabname; though there must have been a Qedarite kingnamed Geshem sometime in the Persian period, a Lihya-nite (northwest Arabia) king with the same name ruled inthe early 2nd century BCE (Fars-Drappeau 2005: 122123) and (d) the Ashdodites are also included among theenemies of Yehud in Nehemiah (4: 7); there is no logic inseeing Ashdod as a foe before the expansion of the Ha-somoneans to the west in the 140s BCE, an expansion

which brought them closer to the territory of Ashdod. Inshort, in the case of the enemies of Nehemiah, too, 2ndcentury realities could have been mixed with old tradi-tions.

FACTS ORHYPOTHESES:WHAT COMES FIRST?

Lipschits, too, challenges my analysis of the size of Jerusalem andits population in the Persian and Early Hellenistic periods (2009).Lipschits concludes that Jerusalem of the Persian period coveredan area of five hectares twice the area that I suggested. This caseis different from the ones dealt with above, because Lipschits read-ing of the biblical text is critical. Here the dispute is only about the

meaning of negative evidence in archaeology.Lipschits agrees with me that the Persian period settlement

covered mainlythe central part of the City of Davids ridge; we arealso not too far apart regarding its size: 2.25 hectares in my analy-sis, 2.83 hectares in his. Yet, Lipschits and I differ regarding thenegative evidence, namely the areas with no Persian and Early Hel-lenistic finds. Lipschits adds the two hectares of the Ophel (be-tween the Temple Mount and Area G) to his calculation and gets aca. five hectares settlement.

In this case too one is faced with a major methodologicalproblem: What should rule: Archaeological facts, even negativeevidence (which is also a fact), or hypotheses? Lipschits writes (mycomments in italics in square brackets):

The importance of the Ophel hill as the main built-up area inthe Persian and Early Hellenistic periods was never discussed

in the archaeological and historical research. The reason wasthe scarcity of finds [in fact, no finds ] in this area, of about 20dunams. ... This is the only flat, easy-to-settle area in the city.

Its proximity to the Temple Mount on the one hand and the


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easy option to fortify it ... [no fortification has ever been found] madeit the preferred option for settlement in the Persian period. Inspite of the scarcity of finds [in fact, no finds] in this area, the rel-

atively abundance of Persian period finds along its southern

slope, its proximity to the temple mount, its geographical cha-racteristics and its importance in the Iron Age and post-Persian

periods all these facts [these are interpretations rather than facts]indicate that this area should be considered part of the settledarea of Jerusalem during the Persian and Early Hellenistic pe-

riods. The absence of Persian period finds in the Ophel hill[here scarcity of finds is correctly replaced with absence of finds] ... isan indication of the limitations of archaeological research

(Lipschits 2009: 1920).

Needless to say, hypotheses and interpretation, not facts dic-tate Lipschits discussion: There are no finds, but since the areamust have been settled according to his logic, there must have been

a settlement there. As an archaeologist I cannot accept this line ofreasoning (which is also true for Cahill 2003; A. Mazar 2006 andNaaman 2007 regarding other periods in the history of Jerusalem;see, for instance, Finkelstein 2008c). It is worth repeating that it issimply impossible that all pottery sherds, walls and other findseven those representing a meager settlement have disappeared.

SUMMARY

This article is about method as well as data. I have dealt with me-thodological issues such as inconsistencies between archaeologyand text; the meaning of negative evidence in archaeology (in sur-

veys and excavations alike); the trustworthiness of a theory built onunsupported hypotheses; the pace of change in material culture; themeaning ofterminus post quem in archaeology, and the like. On thefactual level, with the available data at hand, I see no reason tochange my views on the issues: Persian period Jerusalem coveredca. 22.5 hectares, and both the description of the construction ofthe city-wall in Nehemiah 3 and the List of Returnees in Ezra andNehemiah probably reflect late Hellenistic (Hasmonean) periodrealities. Only new data that would change the archaeological picturecan call for a new interpretation of these texts.

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Finkelstein. Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud